I don’t know the details of Pete Ham’s story as well as some people do. The band was basically groomed by the Beatles’ Apple Records label to be their heirs after the Beatles broke up, and Badfinger did achieve almost instantaneous global success after their first album release.īut that level of initial success and heightened expectation can create pressure, and Badfinger didn’t help their cause by going into business with Stan Polley, a shady business manager who contributed to the band going broke (despite their many recent hits), the collapse of their musical career, and according to the note he left, Pete Ham’s suicide at the age of 27 in 1975. Kept you waiting there too long my love…”ĭo you see a pattern there? Each one of them reads like a love-letter with Pete Ham confessing his regrets and sorrows to a woman he pines for but is no longer there each time he implores her directly with “you”.įrom the outside looking in, being in Badfinger must have seemed like a pretty sweet gig. The first lyric to “Baby Blue” is “ Guess I got what I deserve.Bring it home baby make it soon, I give my love to you.” Looking out of my lonely gloom, day after day. The first verse to the Badfinger hit, “Day After Day” is “ I remember finding out about you.The first verses to “Without You” are “ No, I can’t forget this evening or your face as you were leaving, but I guess that’s just the way the story goes…” and “ Well, I can’t forget tomorrow, when I think of all my sorrow, I had you there but then I let you go…”.Not only did he write “Day After Day” and “Baby Blue,” but Ham also penned the verses to “Without You,” a song taken to number one by Harry Nilsson.Ĭonsider these songs and their opening lyrics: While most acts associated with early ’70s rock and roll were singing about snorting lines off of ceiling mirrors, loving the ladies, and then hopping in the tour bus and blowing out of town, Pete Ham wore his heart on his guitar strap and rendered the heartbreak of leaving into chart-topping lyrics.
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